cd

I had to leave the room at the end
when the hammers in my head wouldn’t let go
like a musical instrument bent heavenward
this is why I say I am boring

another pounding
of young poets and their wakefulnesses
is also why I am sitting here waving down a dragon
hold steady

looking out through this window’s window I see
lots of invoices
the steamroom is empty but for me and my
plastic pages full of poems

I said I want to be nearly as big as that sycamore
so when you look at the photograph ask which is me

cccxcix

those twin trees around your head
keep mocking me
like the spare roof of a sky
and my caramel shirt

sign here
under the grassy poems
(she has a daughter who is a mystic)
then let’s sit in the parking lot

I
took a nap in the parking lot and then I wrote a poem about sitting in the parking lot
and now I have better credit
how about that

our love song has no possession
because you decided no apostrophes for life

cccxcviii

some sort of domestic argument outside the train here at Chinatown Station
last day of September something’s missing and I’m not as
carefree or tired of the corporate bullshit as everybody’s curious about
orientation dinner? sure it’s such a conceited effort
the new members far as I’m concerned are as far removed from me as possible
and everything even a concerted effort to watch the subway mice or rats

he wants to move away and I don’t want to discuss it
Portland Seattle San Francisco anyplace else and I want something really different
like a new country or something really different
       I saw him on the train a few years ago
longest stretch of time I’ve gone without seeing him I must be such a creep
he had that chin hair that I don’t understand why he grows
being concerned perhaps because he’s too dimply or maybe loving the
middle age of the night crying about it

nothing is the least bit as logical as it seems it could be
I swerve off course and go back to the beginning of time when I wrote
like this only now at Roxbury Crossing with a jacket and a tie
these redundant train rides (something from now is the sesame chicken)

cccxcvii

it’ll be a year in like two weeks
however today (TODAY) this time it’s the new poetry
long poems and sequences (thanks we will expedite that)
a special double issue with goosebumps mostly because my nose is running
and i’m not in the mood for this wonderful sequence
where we step into the blue together this wonderful sequence where
the sand keeps sinking us where
it’s the sand that keeps us
for at least the first two minutes (when we can’t read together)

now I think we stepped into the cess
it was better than my last hurrah the second time around
and my nose is running along this very same beach
I can still see the coconut bird in the tree
its leaves yellowing a little

cccxcvi

I was happy to you
it started yesterday
this immediate crash
that moves us toward life
it is moving, a most romantic thing
it started yesterday under a fig tree
a highlight of the weekend
we were rocked
it was an immediate crash moving us
everybody should win like this
it was the weekend of the Oscars
I had dinner with the grapes and walnuts
modern life it’s called
then I moved to Switzerland
happy to crash with you
we moved the weekend
this was happy to you
it started out happy
it was snowing on the Italian flag
and there was a glass of wine
we started archiving
the fig tree
a most romantic thing
I am back to my old habits
maybe he has a fungus on his lungs
my glasses aren’t working
it was snowing and I was happy
my left heart was beating
this is a piece of work
now I am in Switzerland
I do not know how happy it is
the highlight of my crash
everybody should win
I think this is called modern life
hence we have a glass of wine
here, have a glass of wine
look, we are hailing a taxi in German
this is what you would call a happy glass
everybody should win like this

cccxcv

November 11 is fine I think. Remember
these are different meaningless words.
I’m cold. By now our friends are past
Reno and Yellowstone and probably
Las Vegas. “My foot hurts.” Sound
of an airplane makes me dream I’m
dying. Dinner for 9 at Fleur de Lys.
“Do you think you can be monogamous?” Stick
out like sore thumbs. An airplane
plus a siren. A little blizzard of
gnats. A womb in the clouds.
A patch of clover. Walnut
brownies. “I’m cold.”
“My foot hurts.” He
was versatile. The
sound of a fork
scraping a plate.
The fork sound.
We are versatile.
Forking. The
sound of
scraps falling
into a trashbasket.
The sound of trash.
The sound of ash.
Narcotic orange
aren’t hung.

cccxciv

What if I can’t write
now that he is gone?

Bamboo shoots up
for years
next to the stained glass.

cccxciii

I bought two kinds of razors, Irish Spring Aloe Vera soap,
salt, four yogurts, and shaved turkey. Spent about an hour
in Copley Square drinking my coffee and watching people.
Drinking at the Cinch. Had dinner in Hyannis at a Thai
restaurant then we drove to Provincetown. The elevator
is clicking. Stayed at The Red Inn with a nice brunch
on the ocean. Nice view, really, and stinky, with
flowery wallpaper. Then we hiked out across the
rocks to the tip. Low tide. Sat down among
the seabirds and drank merlot and watched
the ocean, the sky, the sun, the birds.
We were out there for four hours.

That was our second anniversary.
Toothpaste really works to fill the holes in the walls.

cccxcii

about how we drove
from beach to beach a
romantic poem about

driving around beaches
it was FOCUS it was
pretty good but it was

hot today it is really
hot in my bed
eating pies listening to

the crickets there is
no need to pursue
these unremembrances

and I am depressed
on these green sheets
under painted clouds

why did we drive beach
to beach and why was it
so hot and so romantic

cccxci

Hurricane Floyd approaches Florida, at least.
I hold Leaves of Grass walking out of Bush Market.  At
Bush Market there were no pecan pies.  We find a pecan pie
at Jones Market or Around the Clock Market or Round the Clock Market.
Someplace.  And now I have a stress headache.

cccxc

Oprah isn’t gay but she has a soulmate. I’m
checking all of the hotels for space. Everyone
is hot. The candle is a paper-Lauper, its throat
is asleep. Asleep like the sand of an ancient
nob. The exhausted Metropol’s peach margarita
seems like such a paradox. Highly motivated
he reaches reception. It tingles when you sleep
on it. A nice new laptop full of cartoons.

ccclxxxix

An “impossible view.” “What don’t you want to write,”
sings a hummingbird floating in and out of a tree
next to the apartment building on the hill. The tree
like the Hensley’s tree, remember that one? With
the big scooped flowers and the murderous squirrel?
If I put the words closer together I get more on the page.
HughesWoolfbusiness. Refill coffee add more cakes to
the fog blindsided by offices.

ccclxxxviii

How to be an artist in 5 days. Disavow us the sea’s pleasures,
like sailbaiting. Disavow the cadence of corporate prima donnas.
Disavow boring us with Björk. St. John’s Wort our feelings
with words fooling us with the works Dame Judith fell on
and then failing us with those same words—Björk’s St.
John’s Wort (BSJW) boring us with titles. The same
bored titles give us Dame Judith. Dame Judith
(Butler) screwing with the Mandarin
Oriental. It’s kinda nice just to be
paranoid of a squirrel’s tail. Skewer us
with the murderous Bombay campaign.
I got a headache on the martini. We
went to bed upside down. It was hot.

ccclxxxvii

here we are with the witches.
under the skies a dragon falls
on a black telephone with
twenty-two buttons for names.
several other buttons, too.
I sit where I can be distracted.
sip Orangina. warm September.
Salem Frenchfries grillcheese
salmonsteak down TWENTY
POUNDS now. we trek more.
I watch him take his towel off.
we’re swimming Swampscott
Beach. someone ask us
how happy our salty locks
are memoir o’ my heart.
all the leaves yet green.
spindrift blows my pages
open. writing upside down.
mud surgery. someone
else. having upside down
shotgun, I guess? to write
upside down in the mud
this setting is too familiar.
probably kids discussing
where Matt Damon put his
butt on a bench. a red
ant across my broom.

ccclxxxvi

Oh, the bay is beautiful
but my back hurts.

                                     Yoga
is just too difficult.

                      The boats dart,
to and fro,
to and fro.

“To and fro?”

Gentle
poem, why only now
you come to me,
                                 an
aquamarine I haven’t
seen since childhood?

In my car.

                           In the
parking lot.

                           Behind
Blanchard’s.

ccclxxxv

Mongolia.
We blowjob hills
like Nob, Russian, and Telegraph.
On Bastille Day.

Tall Pill Alley.
More poems by Cid Corman.
A van passes a
grocery cart.

ccclxxxiv

In the elevator this morning,
everyone’s head is
wrapped in plastic. I’m burned out of love

like my desk. Check it out:
“Let’s make whoop”
“Boys with breasts” “MIT sucks dick!”

and later that same lifetime...

Recharge with hula-dancing.
Dinner at Hukilau’s. Drinks at Hukilau’s.
Masashi asks me to put him into one of my poems.

Masashi’s birthday at Hukilau’s!!!
I really don’t want to remember
when so many people are going away.

Ah, what the hell.... Peaches Christ
introduces Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
But first, the Whoa Nellies throw us a joint.

ccclxxxiii

Earnestly he
heaped his pillows
into a pile for
better asphyxiation.

He loved a boy
spinelessly.
With bosom-
smothering resolve.

Behind his lips
a wooden tongue
that would
only bonk.

And an arthritic heart.
He bought a
bedroom book.
Bypassed kindergarten.

Recess was
his bed. A
hard book.
But his lessness.

Unable to read
he rolled around
until the junk fell off his
tongue. Tonguing,

while not a part
of this biography,
is a big jack-o-lantern
sky. That’s

tongue junk, for you.
I followed him
to the monkey bars
reading Grapes of Wrath.

ccclxxxii

“Nice hair.”

Love is nice hair. The rapture of
the Ozarks, Lisbon, Tangier. There’s

just too much to read.

I wrote a dull note, hit my head
on the J-Way. Head-on? I

write a dull note. Get hit
head-on on the J-Way while

picking out Hawaiian trends

over a birthday drink. I was
shot into the billows.

“Sparkling river, broken leg.”

Autumn’s first big day is
really pretty. A breeze

from tree to tree. We’re

going to Italy in the spring
to watch the soccer, whether

or not we make that goal.

“Nice wok.” “Nice red
Pontiac.”

ccclxxxi

Love is a bunch of bricks
up here in the, what,
mezzanine at Hayden?

I’m hidden.
I seek the blessing of the Mother Church.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.